"Pop unders are the cockroaches of our industry" stated Rick Bruner on his Executive Summary Consulting weblog page.
This is the absolute truth. We are killing any chance that viewers will pay any attention to ANY online ad unit after an onslaught of pop unders...and ups for that matter. It makes a navigational MESS of working on the web. It is repulsive. It is annoying. It has to go. If it doesn't, we will lose all possibility or regaining the weary and jaded Internet audience. We might as well toss in the towel on that medium.
As Rick requests, publishers, do yourself a favor, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE eliminate this sleeze from your offering!
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From a story on the Corante Communications Blog.
Nextel posts first profit for quarter - Washington Post
Nextel Communications continues to impress - yesterday the company announced its first-ever profit of $123 million on an increase of revenue of 25%. The company also said it retired $1.1 billion in debt in the second quarter. It also added 471,000 subscribers in the quarter bringing to 9.6 million its total subscriber base. Analysts said that they continue to be happy with its performance and its plans to try to reduce capital expenses in 2003.
Now, maybe their calling plans won't have to be so high :-)
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I love Blogger. Obviously many other people do to. Tom Hespos writing for Online Spin, a mediapost newsletter had these words about blogging.
But now we are starting to see serious innovation in content publishing � things that bring the online publishing experience to people who, for whatever reason, don't have the wherewithal to learn the technology end of the business. Blogger and LiveJournal have made it possible for anyone to publish to the web at a moment's notice with minimal integration work. When constructing my company's website, I elected to integrate Blogger into UnderscoreMarketing.com's news section, so that anyone on our management team could post updates at any time. Tons of other websites have taken advantage of similar systems. Rick Bruner's Executive Summary site (a terrific read, BTW) takes full advantage of the Blogger system. In doing so, Rick has probably saved himself countless hours of coding and FTPing.
Out of all the high priced, over featured, so called "content management" software, blogging software is by far the next wave of information transferral. No longer will the sharing of information be reserved for corporations and content sites but for all in an unfettered, and highly simplistic manner. Whether or not, any of that content will have merit is a whole other discussion.
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In our own little advertising world, we have a love/hate relationship with banners. For a great kick, check out Valley of the Geeks - Banner Ads We'd Like To See. It's a page with banners from well known companies but with creative executions that more closely resemble what the company is all about. And not the puffy brand blather that usually is contained within banners.
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movieblog is the place to go if you want insightful commentary of the movie industry and the product it produces.
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David L. Smith, writing for the OnlineSPIN newsletter, argues for the application of the standard 15% commission structure to online media buys claiming that, without it, it is confusing and potentially loses money for an agency:
"I have seen several attempts at Web housekeeping systems of late where the agency percentage was added to the net cost, rather than computed on the gross equivalent. Why does this matter? 15% on $100,000 in net spending is $15,000. But if you take $100,000 net spending for any other medium, and try to make the commission 15% of gross spending, you must use a formula that is 100/85* net spending. As anyone who knows media math, this is the equivalent of multiplying the net spending by 1.1765%. This yields a total of $117,650 of which $17,650 is the agency commission, not $15,000. Try the math yourself. You will see that $17,650 is equal to 15% of $117,650. What does it matter? The difference of $2,650 or 15% could be the agency margin or the difference between the agency making a profit or not."
And this:
And you try to explain the above formula to a client who does not understand media math, and why you cannot just take 15% of the net spend. Or a client who thinks he has made a deal for 10% of the net that he has to pay 10% of the gross or 11.765% of the net."
Sheesh, who wants to deal with that on a daily basis and try to explain it to a client every time an invoice goes out?
My reply:
I can't believe we are even talking about commission anymore. For years, it's been fees. You bring up the confusion surrounding the gross up, net down math problem. Why would we ever want to bring that back?
As you point out, the time it takes to resolve this misunderstandings is a huge time suck. Net billing either pass through agency to client or better yet, direct to client (eliminating agency exposure), with a fee that is based on the work done is far simpler and far more relevant to the amount of work required to do the buy.
In fact, with a fee arrangement, an agency can get most its money even if the buy never happens because you fee bill for the planning/buy prep which is most of the work anyway.
And that "lost" $2,650 you refer to? Moot. It's all built into the fee and tied to overhead, profit, etc. Clean and simple.
Works wonders in this particular skittish environment where client's desire's are bigger then their wallet.
We should want KISS, not PITA (pain in the ass)
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